Association for HIT Leaders Comments on ICD-10

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, in a comment letter, expresses support for the government’s decision to delay ICD-10 implementation to October 2014.

The association compliments the Department of Health and Human Services for quickly setting a new date and limiting the extension to a year. “A longer delay would seriously disrupt ongoing efforts to convert to ICD-10,” CHIME says in comments on the proposed rule. “And, as HHS itself recognizes, a longer delay would significantly increase the costs of converting to ICD-10.”

CHIME also says that setting different compliance dates for physicians and hospitals would be a serious mistake as providers need to be in lockstep with each other. “If HHS decides to entertain different ICD-10 compliance deadlines for different covered entities, we believe it would be most useful to set an earlier compliance date for health plans.” This would provide additional opportunities for providers to test with payers.

“Finally, we recommend that HHS move steadily towards its proposed compliance deadline for ICD-10 and dismiss calls to ‘leapfrog’ from ICD-9 to ICD-11,” according to the comment letter. “While the maturity of ICD-11 may hold great benefits in the future, we believe such claims are speculative, at best, because so much is yet to be developed.”